Mosaic

Charles Lutyens was commissioned in 1963 to create a mosaic mural of
“Angels of the Heavenly Host” in St. Paul’s Church, Bow Common. The
mural was integral to the design and structure of the building.

While the purpose and intent of the mural was conceptualised at the
time of the church’s design and formulated within the directive of the
convention of Angels being haloed, winged and clothed in white and in an
open attitude of worship, underlining the universality of faith, the
work started without its final appearance being known or drawn.

The difficulty of creating ‘Angels’ on the walls of the church was
resolved by what seemed to be a characteristic of ‘Angels’ that
according to the stories it was not known what they would look like
before they ‘appeared’. The application of the tesserae was approached
in this light.

That the Angels would be “meaningful as a statement of faith today”
Lutyens chose not to derive his image of angels from representations by
artists in the past.

St. Paul’s Church, Bow Common, E3, which is a Grade II* listed
building was designed by architects Robert Maguire and Keith Murray, was
consecrated in 1960 and is the first church in this country built with
the altar in its central space. The mural, which was made
single-handedly by Lutyens from coloured Murano glass tesserae,
comprises ten ‘Angels’ and representations of the four elements of
earth, fire, air and water. Taking five years to make, the mosaic covers
800 sq.ft. with continuous unbroken images around the walls of the
church and is probably the largest artist created contemporary mosaic
mural in the British Isles. It was completed in 1968.